(OOC: This is a JP with
@SirSkully ,
@Noodlewerfer and
@SageShooter )
Dylan looked up from his desk where he had been sitting for the past hour. First period was a time of no classes for him, so he'd piled through the profiles of his students, to determine their names. He now stood up, grabbing his backpack, and began walking to his lecture room.
He quickly found it on the ground floor. Since he was housed on the fourth floor, he had to walk down the whole way. But it was good excersize after all. He put down his backpack on a seat, pulled out his laptop from it, and connected it to the beamer. A picture with " Introduction to Geography" with pictures of a mountain, a river valley, and a rural town next to it. It would be a few minutes before the first students would enter, so he looked over his notes the last time.
He stood up and walked to the door, waiting to greet the students. When the bell rang for the end of first period, the first students began trickling in. He greeted them softly, nodding or saying 'good morning' to some. When he saw the last students walk in, he waited for a moment, and then went back inside, closing the door. He walked to his desk, as he saw the students sitting down, and waited for them to be seated.
When they were done and had taken out their notepads, Dylan started. " Good morning everyone, welcome to Geography 101." He clicked his pointer, and the next slide came up. " My name is Dylan Bjarkmar, as you might be aware already. I will be teaching you geo-sciences, but I'm also available as your Counsellor. For now, I'll be teaching you in the basics of geography."
Dylan flipped another slide, and then began with the formalities. " First, we must take some formalities. I will take you trough the course layout and the necessary tools to complete this semester." Dylan zoomed in first on the layout page. " First of, I will tell you the goals of this course. Our main goals are of the following three forms. First: the primary goal is to help you develop contextual knowledge of the location of globally significant places – both terrestrial and marine - and their physical and human characteristics. Secondly, we will help you understand the processes that give rise to key physical and human geographical features of the world. Lastly, we will help you develop skills to depict geographical features visually, including cartography, diagrams, photography, and Geographical Information Systems or GIS. These will be the focus of my lectures, as well as your homework." Dylan zoomed out and then onto another part. " The main source of this course and in fact all geo-sciences is the 'Geography Student Edition'. Possible are the 12th or 13th edition. My personal is the 13th, so I will maintain the setup of that one. There are also two, valuable but not mandated, sources. 'People Geography', 6th Edition, and 'Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts', 10th Edition. I will hand out short excerpts of these in class. There are an endless amount of more books available, but these are voluntary. A tip for you: all books are available in the Library."
Dylan then proceeded to the next slide, for his current class. " Today, I will give you an introduction to the prime concepts of geography." He pointed to the centre of the slide. " In essence, early geography was a study concerning two prime questions: 'what gives rise to geographical structures?' and 'what is men's interaction with the environment?' We will focus upon these questions the coming time, as they form the two forms of geographical study: 'physical or environmental geography', and 'People geography'. We will examine these concepts through the development of geographical theory and learn about ecology and navigation along the way." He stopped for a moment. " Any questions so far?"
Adi had plopped herself on a seat next to Sonia, watching the board. She didn't have any questions, so she stayed silent. Meanwhile Adria was somewhat relieved, seeing the pictures of geographical features that were initially on the board. Though it still sounded complicated, the photos looked more recognizable to her than Yamataigo symbols, which gave her some place to start.
As the one winged Lorath walked into the room, Harmony gave the professor a cheery "Hello!" and small wave before she headed down to her seat. A data pad set to record the lecture and a pad of paper in front of her to take her more important notes, Harmony seemed ready and waited until the lesson started by going over her own notes for her first lecture. As everything started, she put her notes away and began to pay attention. She had some knowledge of geography due to her house and her upbringing, but it never hurt to learn more and pad her credits out a little more.
Hati had strolled in with one hand covering his mouth, a small cough that had annoyed the young wolf every now and then and had reared its ugly head since last class but he just pushed it aside for now and tried to not make too much of a scene while entering - moving to sit up near the back of the room and flop down into the chosen seat with a slight thud, lupine tail dragging itself out of his uniform to hang freely as the red-eyed boy set out his datapad and then looked towards the front of the room.
His mother, who he was rather close too, was a sniper and his trade as a SABER infiltrator meant Hati always had to know the ins and outs of an A/O before heading in - so geographical studies were really nothing too new, something he could hopefully just go through for easy marks with maybe a nap or two along the way but for now he said nothing and just studied the current slide.
Dylan looked for a moment, seeing that the students were taking notes and paying attention. He turned to his presentation again, and proceeded: " If there are no questions, then let's begin this letter with the basic formula in which we do geography." He turned to a slide covering two separate maps, one filled with mountains, rivers, and clouds, the other with flora, fauna, and villages.
" There are two significant parts in which we, as a researcher, conduct our 'business'. The first way to look at a place or small area is through it's Geosphere: the accumulation of inorganic materials that make up the location, most importantly those of minerals, which itself is called the lithosphere, water sources, which is called the hydrosphere and when frozen, the cryosphere, and the gases that make up the upper layers of a planet, the atmosphere. These layers are often the very foundation for the other method to look at a location: the Biosphere."
Dylan looked around for a moment, seeing that students were taking notes hastingly and trying to catch up. " If you are worrying about your notes, please take, well, note, that my presentation will be available online, and that almost all glossary or terminology is carefully explained in a similar manner in your book." Dylan smiled for a moment. " If you wonder why I am speaking then, I will say that I am offering you commentary and more elaborate explanations than what are given in your books. That is the main advantage."
Dylan quickly turned back, but made a final remark: " Also, do not hesitate to interrupt me between slides." He continued:
" The biosphere is the collection of every living part of a location, most important those of the flora, which is the plantlife, and the fauna, the animal life. The range of `fauna and flora is an intricate interaction between organic material, mineral availability, and environmental influences like weather patterns, water resources, and layout."
" Both these spheres, as they are called, are part of what is called an ecosystem. Simply speaking, Ecosystems are the communities of living organisms with similar environmental preferences, that interact with their environment. Ecosystems are kept in control by both biotic and abiotic principles. Energy flow from plantlife to herbivores and onto carnivores is an example of a biotic system. The principles of erosion and mineral flow through soil are abiotic systems."
" Perhaps this is a large chunk for you to consume, however I will bear in thought that I do not require you to understand the principles of Energy flow and erosion...yet. We will examine these principles in a bird eye's view, but they are not treated until the end of semester. For now, I simply require you to understand what makes up the Geosphere, and the Biosphere. We will examine how these two interact shortly."
Dylan clicked unto his last slide, where he had taken the liberty of making up some questions he had variated from book examples. " For now, I would like for you to make the following query. You will make a table, divide them between geosphere and biosphere, and then differentiate each of these words to fit them in the right column. I will do the same on the back of the board. If you have trouble reading this, Example 3b of Chapter 1 is similar to this and has some of the word that are also on here."
Dylan moved to the back of the small rollable board that was in the right corner of the class, taking marker in hand. He watched the students as they made up the tables in their notebooks, or so he hoped, and then made a last reminder: " I will give you three minutes, fill in as many as you can."
Harmony listened to the lecture and still took notes regardless. It helped her to pay attention better. But this was all thankfully things she had plenty of experience with. After all, her people did live within nature. For the three minutes given, she split the words apart and put them in the different columns where they belonged. It was easy for the girl and before the three minutes were up, she was already done.
Adi made a table in her notes, thinking and being careful to choose the right columns. She worked through the words slowly, making sure she was putting them in the correct place. As a result, the very-long-haired girl got every word she wrote down right, but only finished categorizing about half the words before time was up. Adria, on the other hand, was able to fill in most (but not all) of the words on her table. However, a number of them were in the wrong column, and most of her mistakes were plants that were placed in the geosphere column.
Hati's columns were perhaps a little messy but the wolf wanted to make the most effective use of the time as he could, being one of Saber's Phalanxes and somebody who needed to know everything about their AO meant all these terms and such weren't anything new to him - he spent the full three minutes scribbling down names and scratching them out until everything was where it was meant to be, pen being dropped back down to the table with a satisfied huff three seconds before the timer went off.
Dylan stopped as the timer slowly ended. He had written the answers on the back of the board within one minute, but to appear as involved as his students, he had remained behind the board for another 2 minutes. He stopped and went to the front of the board. " Time's up." He said, as his students placed their pens down. " For you who have completed the task on time: well done. But you will have to test that speed against the things you did right." With that, he turned the board. He had filled in the two rows as his students had done, meticulously looking at the specific way that words were said. " We don't have time to visit all the things on the board, so I will give you some of the important topics that many people do wrong on their first attempt. Don't worry, I was one of you once."
He stepped towards the board, and circled some of the words from both rows. " For instance, some of you may have placed hydrosphere under the Biosphere, since it involves aqueous environments with plant- and wildlife. But strictly speaking, the studying of the hydrosphere does not involve organisms. It is only the studying of hydroactive variables, such as sedimentary flow, seafloor spreading, the water cycle, and mineral interaction. The hydrosphere has a close relation to marine biology, of course, since these variables directly influence the biospheres of oceans, rivers, and lakes."
He then stepped over to the other column. " Others of you may have placed the following items in the geosphere column. Fossilisation, and biopoesis. Fossils are perhaps the putrefied remains of ancient organisms, but they are strictly speaking still part of the biosphere, as they are dead, not lifeless. Fossils give us an indication of the age of organisms, clues about evolution, and a fundamental understanding of the building blocks of life. As is evident, fossils from bacteria have shown that ancient organisms were governed by the same principles as ours today, and may have needed the same environmental conditions to thrive."
He stopped at biopoesis. " Perhaps many of you got this wrong because you didn't know what it means. If you put it in the Biosphere because it said 'bio', it's not much better. The whole theory is quite large to discuss now, and I will disclose it when we come upon Chapter 5 that deals with it. The short answer is: biopoesis is the theory that living organisms arose from organic material that was not alive. It is also called Abiogenesis, opposite of biogenesis, which says that live formed from simpler living organic materials, most likely prokaryotes."
Dylan looked at the clock as he saw he had only five more minutes. He came to the last slide of his slideshow. The Homework. He knew that students dreaded it, so he started: " This last slide shows my advice for your home student for these courses. As you know, I can't obligate you to make these assignments or read these paragraphs, but I strongly urge you to do this. It is the best way to process the matter and reach each of the learning goals. This works better then rushing through it before an exam, in my experience."
" You might notice I do not make you do all exercises of a chapter. I make what I hope is the best collection of assignments to get you trough the matter and towards each goal. Also, I urge you to read the chapters I list for our next lesson, so that you are prepared before entering this class."
Just as he finished, he heard the school bell. He nodded, and looked to his students. " That is all. Class dismissed." He looked as he saw several students close their work and got their bags. " I will see some of you at your counselor's meeting this afternoon. Take care." With that, he walked to the door and opened it, as a mirror version of how he opened his class. He smiled and nodded as the students walked back out. Within a minute, the class was emptied out again. He looked back to his desk, as he saw other students making their way to the class. He walked to his desk, unplugged his laptop, and packed it back in his suitcase.
He walked out of the room towards his office. Now it was time to prepare for student-counselor meetings. He had noticed some of them in his class. It would be time to get to know them better.
